


Beloved, Let Us Be Stars in the Same Sky

by Siavahda



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/F, Faeries - Freeform, Happy Ending, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 18:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5100965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of my dearest friends is getting married to a wonderful woman tomorrow, and when I offered to write her a wedding present she requested a Clianthe wedding. I decided to post it today so that she doesn't have to be distracted on her big day tomorrow!</p><p>In other words: a Runed!verse Clianthe wedding. Beware of the fluff! </p><p>All the congratulations in the WORLD Erin, and all the best wishes in the universe. I know you guys will be amazing together :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beloved, Let Us Be Stars in the Same Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WaifsandStrays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaifsandStrays/gifts).



They draw flowers and stars on her hands and wrists in gold, crescent moons in silver on her throat, and geometric patterns in copper over her collarbone and breasts and stomach.

They braid cowrie shells and wolf teeth and swan feathers into her hair, glue beads of opal and aquamarine around her eyes and on her cheeks, and from a box of elder wood comes a knife that no one but Clary can touch, a knife forged from star-fallen iron and a little of her own blood. She straps it to her thigh as another bride might wear a garter.

An alicorn the length of her finger hangs from her neck, strung on a white and silver cord. It alone is not traditional.

They proffer a length of azure silk and she wraps it around her hips like a sarong skirt, knotted at her left hip. Another goes around her chest, the scarf-like ends trailing down her back like gossamer wings, and it is done.

She thinks she is supposed to feel nervous, or else excited, but she feels neither. Only a creamy satisfaction, as if everything is going just as she wants it.

Because it is, of course.

When they tell her it’s time, she walks barefoot out of the bower and into faerieland proper.

There are hundreds of people. Her mother is here, in a dress of magnolia blossoms and seafoam that was a gift from Olianthe’s mother, because the parthenogenetic high castes of the fae honour single mothers above all others; Simon is here, and her Shadowhunter friends, all in full Nephilim regalia. But they look almost normal next to the other guests. They form a circle around the central glade and Clary walks through the crowd with her head held high, because it has been years since the strangeness of the fae could make her falter. The bird beaks, the branches growing from skin, the dresses of water and fire, the tails and stripes and hair ornaments of living mice and butterflies; these things are no longer so strange. There are representatives of the other Courts here to see the youngest Seelie princess wed to a mortal, figures covered in blue paint and gold, people with black veins or  limbs of ice, flowers blossoming on their skulls in place of hair and eyes like oceans—and Olianthe’s six sisters, resplendent in Seelie finery, offering smiles like wedding gifts as their sister’s mortal lover passes them by. Bubbles float above their heads, with tiny lights inside that form constellations among the trees; lower to the ground someone has turned a thousand apples into candle holders. Nearly every guest is holding one.

They throw lavender and powdered sugar on the path she walks, and the scents rise through the air as the press of her feet turns them to perfume.

And then she is through the guests and the trees, and the glade is open to the twilit sky and Olianthe is waiting for her beside the fire.

Her faerie princess is a vision in emerald, a deep green skirt that sweeps the ground and glitters with embroidered leaves. Her small breasts are bared and unbound, and every inch of her upper body seems covered in the gilt henna that adorns Clary, the patterns even more complex, intricate as jewelry. Her hair is a river of honey falling past her waist, and like Clary there are swan feathers and wolf teeth in the braids, and golden bells that sing when the breeze brushes them. Jade and pearls are studded on her face, forming swirling, spiraling patterns for luck and love, and when she sees Clary her smile is like a star falling into Clary’s cupped hands, for her alone.

Clary’s heart sings.

The Seelie Queen stands on the other side of the fire. Her crown is a huge circle of bone that rises over her head like a sun, and at its center is an egg. A veil of pearls hides her face, because this is not her moment, and in her hand is a scepter of bone and gold and crystal with a unicorn’s horn at the top like a wand.

“This eve,” she begins as Clary and Olianthe clasp hands, “we stand witness to the joining of these two beings.” She swings the scepter at her daughter and her bride like a sword. “Witness!”

 _“Witnessed!”_ comes the cry from a hundred throats, shouted and sung, and behind her veil the Queen smiles.

“We witness you,” she tells them. “Be joined, if that is your wish. Remember only the words of Dôn to her children: love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Stand together, but not in each other’s shadow. Be as the stars are: needing no other for your light, but forming constellations in your dance together.”

Clary nods, and at her side Olianthe does the same. “We hear,” they say in chorus. “We remember.”

“Then be joined,” the Queen intones, and steps back, and Clary turns to her almost-wife, and the firelight makes magic of the jewels on their faces.

“Beloved,” Olianthe says, “let us be stars in the same sky. Let us be wolves of one pack. Let us be swans of one flight.”

“Beloved,” Clary answers, and she is smiling, smiling, “I will be these things with you.”

Olianthe is grinning like a fool, like someone starstruck. She reaches for the slit in her skirt, and from under it draws a knife the twin of Clary’s own. The hilt is silver, shining. “Then beloved, my death is yours.” And she offers the knife, hilt-first.

There is no surer way to kill one of the People than with iron and mortal blood, and that is what these blades contain, a drop of Clary’s blood. Olianthe puts that death in Clary’s hands and all the days before it, all the days of her immortal life until the last, and their hands part so Clary can hold it all.

“Beloved,” Clary says, and surprises herself with the huskiness of her voice—surely she is not going to cry? “I accept it with joy, and give to you my own.” And she draws the other knife, her knife, and not even the Mortal Sword was ever accepted with such reverence.

They do not sheath their swapped knives yet. The Seelie Queen hands Clary an apple, and she cuts it in half, not vertically but horizontally so the seeds form a star. She gives half to Olianthe and they cut their halves into pieces with the terrible, beautiful daggers; the iron does not, cannot burn Clary but she handles it just as carefully as her love does.

They feed each other the apple, piece by piece, and the sweet crispness is like a kiss, over and over.

When the last piece is gone, the Seelie Queen bows to them both. “Witnessed.”

_“Witnessed!”_

“In the sight of Dôn, we acknowledge that you are joined,” the Queen says, and her voice is moonlight on water. “Beneath the sun and stars, we acknowledge that you are joined. In our hearts and minds and mouths, we acknowledge that you are joined.”

 _“Näin-ääninen, näin marthain!”_ the gathered fae cry, which Clary knows means something like ‘it is spoken and it is so’, and she laughs, she can’t help it, it bubbles out of her like champagne and Olianthe embraces her, pulls her in and as the guests sing their cheers she whispers her true name in Clary’s ear, the full name of her soul that until now only her mother and Queen knew—

And Clary holds it as close as a death, as a heart as the faeries shoot fire and lightning into the air, ribbons of light and gem-like stars like fireworks, and she can only imagine what it looks like because she has her hands on Olianthe’s jewel-studded face and is kissing her, finally, at last—

And she tastes like apples—

She tastes like forever.

And Clary smiles, because forever is exactly what they are.

* * *

 

NOTES

 

The wedding ‘advice’ the Queen quotes was heavily inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s ‘On Marriage’, which I suggest you read because it is beautiful.


End file.
